Welcome to David Bustle's Blog!

The world wants you to stay small, give up and keep your light from burning bright. It wants you to lay down your arms and fall in line with the others to blend in. When you stand up to fight for what you believe in, it will try to suck the breath right out of you. The road we travel is dark, full of curves and it’s pouring rain. Everyone expects for your knees to buckle out from under you and for you to break.

There is light at the end of tunnel for those that want it, but you’ll have to fight like hell to get there. If you know in your heart this is what you are supposed to do, you will have to stay strong. It’s your choice to fall down and submit or let your fire blaze from within.

If you truly want it, you’ve got to stand up with your scrapped knees and bloody nose, smile back at them and keep swinging with everything you are made of.

Know that god is with you and through him you have strength that is unmatched. He wouldn’t give you something you can’t handle. Trust that he is with you even when the wolves are circling around you. You may feel like you are constantly living in the eye of the storm, but you’ve got to brush off the debris be strong and fight with everything that is within you. Fight to the bitter end and leave this world exhausted if you have to. Give it everything you’ve got and don’t let up.

Give Em’ Hell & Keep Swinging,

– DB

“Once more into the fray. To the last good fight I’ll ever know. Live and die on this day. Live and die on this day.” – The Grey.

We grow up in a world that is constantly asking for permission to do the things we want to do. In order to drive, you’ll need a license. In order to get a top paying job, we need the education and qualifications. We are constantly needing and seeking “permission” to succeed and do what we want. However, to do anything revolutionary, you can’t always think like this. If you wait around always seeking permission, you can never do anything great and rarely get much accomplished. You’ll spend months or even years waiting on others to say yes to you.

“Orville Wright never needed a pilots license.” – Gordan McKenzie

I think it’s interesting how people think they need qualifications or credentials to start their big idea. I have met tons of friends that want to start a business, but they think they need to go get that fancy MBA before they can move forward. When I first started my business, I had $100 in my pocket (which I spent on brochures and incorporation), and a dream for something better (thank God for my friend, Bekah who fed me!). I was simply armed with my brain and not much else. If you look at most big business founders, you will often find the same to be true. They don’t have the qualifications, traditional education or permission for their ideas. They lack what the world says they need. They simply have desire and drive to do something great. They don’t need permission. They don’t need approval. They just did what it took, started and moved forward. Stop seeking permission for your ideas and just get started.

A lot of businesses think that it’s the specific media’s fault for their ad or marketing piece for not getting the results they want. Although I agree that not every media is right for every business, it’s often not the media that’s causing the bad results. Instead, it’s often the marketing message sent through the media. Most businesses are poorly advised to do branding with their ads by ad reps or agencies. It’s what I call a “business card style” advertisement with just their name, rank and serial number. You know, here’s our pretty logo, a large graphic, our bulleted list of services and our contact information.

The problem with this type of marketing message is that it does nothing to actually convince someone to buy from you right now. There is no offer, call to action, incentive or reasons to buy from your company. There’s nothing to position or set your business a part from the competition. It also does nothing to get into the mind and emotions of a prospective customer. If you want big results with your marketing and advertising, you need to think differently. I advise my clients to think about their marketing this way: With any kind of advertising that you do, no matter whether it’s T.V., radio, direct mail, internet marketing or whatever, you must think of it like the message a salesman would say to a prospective customer. The information you put in your advertisements is the only information your prospective customers will see in your ads, therefore that’s all of the information that you are arming your salesman with. If all the information you provided to a salesman for prospective buyers was your name and contact information, how successful would THAT sales presentation be? They would quickly go broke, be poor and starving.

So what you need to do is arm your salesman with as many tools and tactics as you can to help them to sell a prospective buyer. It takes a whole lot more than just a list of services, a logo and your contact information to convince someone to make a purchase from you. So with every kind of marketing or advertisement that you do, think of them like your “salesman.” Ask yourself, if I were to give the information in my ads to a salesman to sell with would it be enough to get a purchase from a customer?

It’s the end of business as we know it. Whether we like it or not, the marketplace we have become accustomed to, has changed forever and is not going to go back to how it was before. We now live in an entirely new tech savvy world, where the traditional forms of marketing and advertising will not work like they used to. I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom on you here, but how we as consumers shop and spend their lives is radically different than it was just a few years ago. If we as marketers and business owners don’t acknowledge and react to these changes, we will face major problems. We must change they way we think about marketing in order to succeed.

You see, it used to be that the businesses held the power. They controlled the messages to consumers, and in turn, the consumers followed them. You could simply put an ad for your product or service on TV or in the newspaper, and fairly easily reach a large amount of your target audience with a few ads.

Then a major shift in power changed the fundamentals of how we shop forever. Technological advancements shifted that power from the businesses in favor of the consumer. This shift in power spawned a new world where only the strong survive, thrive and prosper. So what changed? How was the marketplace reborn? In my research, I have found that there have been 3 major cataclysmic shifts that lead to this new marketplace.

Cataclysmic shift #1: Choice

Today, there are more choices for consumers than ever. Consumers and buyers have a choice in:

Products and Services

Over 26,000 products and brands are introduced every single year. Competition for the same eyeballs is at an all time high. Locally, we have become drastically over-stored. We have the same type of product and services offered within a few miles of each other. They also have little or no differentiation from one another. The Internet creates even more choices for consumers and even allows your customers to purchase your products and services anywhere worldwide.

Media

We also have a choice of what media we consume. It used to be that there were only a few TV stations. Now, cable companies offer 1,000s. We used to have only a few local radio stations. Today, we have the Internet and satellite radio which has opened up the air to just about anyone who wants to be heard. Not too long ago, there were only a few newspapers in print. Now everything has moved online, and consumers can access news via blogs, social networking sites, online newspapers and magazines. We have millions of places for consumers to get news. The problem is that consumers are spread out and scattered among hundreds of media channels. Therefore, reaching a target audience has become much more difficult.

Cataclysmic Shift #2: Buyer Aversion To Advertising

As companies compete for buyer attention, consumers are pushing back and attempting to avoid them.

Buyers are pummeled with marketing messages every single day from magazines, radio, TV, newspaper ads, billboards and signs. Advertising is everywhere you turn and has become overwhelming. Research shows that in the 1970s, people were exposed to less than 500 advertisements per day. Today, it’s over 5,000. Because of this bombardment, consumers are now actively avoiding them and as a result, they are becoming less effective. Consumers are paying less attention to traditional ads and have even become good at mentally zapping them out.

Not only are consumers purposely avoiding marketing messages, they also placing restrictions on advertisers like “the do not call or fax list.” There is even a growing trend for the “do not mail list.” We have seen increases in spam complaints and the installment of pop up blockers. Tivo and DVR enable us to skip ads altogether. In fact, 82% of consumers fast-forward ads on TV. Satellite radio allows customers to skip radio ads completely.

“The 30-second TV spot and many other traditional advertising mediums has outlived it’s usefulness. We should pat it on the back, and say thanks for 50 years of great service. Here’s your gold rolex.” -Joseph Jaffe

Cataclysmic Shift #3: Tech Advancements

Technology has also created a new consumer. This change is the most important and damaging of all.

The Internet has empowered today’s buyer with endless choices, reviews, and product details. They are armed with new weapons that threaten the very fabric of most businesses. Here’s why:

Price and Service Shopping

Today, a simple 3-second Internet search will result in a list of hundreds of product options and prices. Today’s consumers can walk into a local store, test the product, in person, and then use their mobile device to check and see if the same product can be purchased at a lower price from another venue.

Reviews

Not only can today’s consumers “price shop” you, but they can also see reviews from other people like them, who have purchased the same product. In just a few seconds, consumers can access reviews of a product, a business in general, customer service and even your competition.

Consider this: If you are searching for a product and you come across a bad review about the seller, how does that affect your decision to buy from them?

This is the market you are up against. These Cataclysmic shifts have changed everything forever.

I am amazed at the amount of companies that do not track their marketing results. It’s pure insanity.

A great quote: “Half of my money spent on marketing and advertising is wasted the problem is I don’t know which half.”

A vast majority of companies out there are just like this. I had a client awhile back that I was convinced that his customers all came from his radio ads. I knew they came elsewhere, so I convinced him to test and track it just to be sure.

Yup. I was right.

Here he was for years spending thousands and thousands on radio and not getting much at all from it. If he had simply tracked where his customers were coming from, he would have known it was wasteful and he could have placed his ad dollars where they were actually benefitting him.

So the key here is to track everything you can. If you can’t track it, scrap it. Ask your customers where they heard about you, and keep a tally.

You can set up special phone numbers for each one of your ads that keep track of how many calls you receive from a specific mail piece. We now even have a really cool scanner for direct mail that keeps track digitally and tells you how much they spent because of that specific direct mail piece. Use Coupons. Track email open rates. Track time spent on your website. So find ways to track everything. Don’t guess about your marketing. Know.